It was a quarter to midnight on a weekday in early April, and all I wanted to do was purchase one last bag of pizza Combos and one last bottle of fruit-flavored snob water with my parents’ money. “Sorry. Graduating seniors can’t bill to their bursar accounts anymore. Will that be cash or Flex dollars?” »

I spent this winter break like I spend every other — lying on the couch watching the MTV “Cribs” marathon, occasionally going over to a friend’s house to watch a movie or take turns naming obscure people from high school. And, as on every break, there were two scheduled events: the Vacation Haircut and the »

Everyone got the freshman year Mom Laundry Lecture: “Don’t mix whites with colors. Remember that red sweater Aunt Carol gave you will bleed all over absolutely everything. Oh, my baby is so grown up and independent!” Independent? Hardly. We are prisoners of our laundry. Laundry is a formidable foe. Like the New York Yankees, it »

Before my English professor launched into his lecture on the first day of class last September, he stepped back from the podium and said, “Look, guys. You’re not as far apart from your professors as you think. When we’re talking with you, we feel a lot closer to you in age than you realize.” He »

There is something to be said for being a Parents’ Weekend orphan. If you linger in the common room around suppertime and make a point to sit directly beneath the fluorescent floor lamp so as to look sickly and undernourished, suitemates’ moms and dads will always invite you out to dinner with them. You reap »

The time for diplomatic finesse is over. Now they must act in one swift movement. No matter the rhetoric of their opponents, they will move with the necessary resources and manpower to execute the policies discussed all year. The battle will be short, violent and decisive, like a summer rainstorm in Texas hill country. Tonight »

By this point in the semester, there are two kinds of students at Yale. There are those whose intellectual primacy has been affirmed. At mealtime, they are too excited recounting adroit remarks they made to approving and incredibly learned, famous professors to eat their fast-congealing brownie pudding. Their course packets are already festooned with obnoxious »

Life in the post-Yale working world is like a petri dish full of deadly microbes. It’s interesting to look at for brief amounts of time assuming all your vaccinations are in order and you’re wearing proper protective gear — but I would never want to live in it. After summers of obscure Yale-funded research projects »

Yale foreign language departments know how to have fun. The Spanish students have Cinco de Mayo. I hear the German department screens movies every week and celebrates some kind of German “cheese day.” Foreign language here is so wild, pre-frosh who wandered into HGS earlier this week thought they had walked into the middle of »

Anyone who happened to stroll past the Jonathan Edwards College library last Tuesday night might have wondered at the anxious muffled chatter wafting out into the courtyard. Startled by the spirited boos and cheers, passers-by probably figured we were having the annual JE junior-senior cockfight. Actually, the cockfight is slated for next week. Last Tuesday »

I initially applied for a spring break externship because the AYA propaganda appealed to my post-graduation anxieties. Where the brochure promised “an interesting and valuable career-oriented experience,” I saw a chance to charm prospective employers and gussy up my resume with something besides high school speech team accolades. My 10 days spent working at the »

According to the History Channel’s Web site, Valentine’s Day evolved out of the Roman festival Lupercalia, held during the ides of February. The festival began with a celebration in honor of Faunus, the god of agriculture, during which young boys would sacrifice goats and slice the goat skin into strips. They would then frolic along »